The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Seventh Lecture

[ 1 ] Today we want to engage in one of those spiritual scientific considerations that show us how the knowledge we gain through the anthroposophical worldview is suited to give us insights into life in the broadest sense. Such knowledge not only makes everyday life understandable to us, it also gives us insights into life in that great, wide sphere which we then contemplate when we follow it beyond death into the times that elapse between death and a new birth for human beings. But it is precisely for everyday life that spiritual science can be of great benefit to us; it can solve many of our riddles and show us how we can, so to speak, cope with life. For people who are unable to look into the depths of existence, much of what they encounter in their daily, even hourly, lives remains incomprehensible. Many questions pile up that cannot be answered by sensory experience and which, if they remain unanswered, remain mysteries and interfere with life by causing dissatisfaction. But dissatisfaction in life can never serve the development and true healing of humanity. We could list hundreds of such riddles of life that shine much deeper into life than one usually suspects.

[ 2 ] One such word that holds many riddles is the word “forgetting.” You all know it as the word that indicates the opposite of what we call retaining a certain idea, a certain thought, an impression. You have all certainly had all kinds of unpleasant experiences with what lies behind the word “forget.” You have all probably gone through the torment that often arises when this or that idea, this or that impression, as we say, disappears from memory. Perhaps you have also wondered: Why must something like forgetting be part of the phenomena of life?

[ 3 ] Well, we can only gain insight, and indeed fruitful insight, into such a matter from the facts of occult life. You know that memory has something to do with what we call the human etheric body. So we may also assume that the opposite of memory, forgetting, has something to do with the etheric body. The question is perhaps justified: Does it make sense in life that human beings can forget things they once had in their imagination? Or must we be content with what so often happens with regard to this idea, namely that forgetting is characterized only in negative terms, that we say: It is simply a deficiency of the human soul that it cannot have everything present at every moment. We will only gain insight into forgetting if we bring to mind the meaning of its opposite, the meaning and essence of memory.

[ 4 ] When we say that memory has something to do with the etheric body, we must ask ourselves: How is it that in humans the etheric body is given the task of retaining impressions and ideas, since the etheric body is already present in plants and actually has a fundamentally different task? We have often spoken of the fact that a plant, in contrast to a mere stone, has its entire materiality permeated by the etheric body. And the etheric body is the principle of life in the narrower sense in the plant, and then the principle of repetition. If the plant were subject only to the activity of the etheric body, then the principle of the leaf would repeat itself continuously, starting from the root of the plant. The fact that limbs repeat themselves over and over again in a living being is due to the etheric body, because it always wants to produce the same thing again and again. This is why there is such a thing in life as we call reproduction, the production of its own kind. It is essentially based on an activity of the etheric body. Everything in humans and animals that is based on repetition can be traced back to the etheric principle. The fact that ring bones repeat themselves in the spine stems from this activity of the etheric body. The fact that plants terminate their growth at the top, that the flower appears to us as a summary of the entire growth process, stems from the fact that the astrality of the earth sinks into the growth of the plant from outside. The fact that in humans the ring bones of the spine expand upward to form the brain capsule and become hollow bones has its origin in the activity of the human astral body. We can therefore say that everything that produces endings is subject to the astral and that all repetition originates from the etheric principle. Plants have this etheric body and humans have it too. Of course, we cannot speak of memory in plants. For to claim that a plant remembers, through a kind of unconscious memory, what the leaf that produced it was like, and then grows a little further and produces the next leaf according to the pattern of the first, leads to the fantasies to which a new natural science is tending today. For example, it is also said that heredity originates from a kind of unconscious memory. This now constitutes a certain, one might almost say, nonsense in scientific literature, because to speak of memory in plants is actually mere dilettantism in the higher sense.

[ 5 ] We are dealing with the etheric body, which is the principle of repetition. In order to grasp the difference between the plant etheric body and the human etheric body, which, in addition to the properties of the plant etheric body, also has the ability to develop memory, we must first understand what distinguishes plants from humans. Think about it: you plant a seed in the ground, and from that seed a specific plant grows. A wheat seed will produce a wheat stalk and wheat ears, a bean seed will produce a bean plant. And you will have to say to yourself: in a certain sense, it is irrevocably determined by the nature of the seed how this plant will develop. It is true that the gardener may come along and refine the plant through all kinds of gardening skills, reshaping it in a certain way. But that is basically something exceptional and, moreover, only of minor importance compared to what we said earlier, namely that a plant will develop from the seed that has a very specific form, a very specific growth pattern, and so on. Is this also the case with humans? Certainly, to a certain extent this is true, but only to a certain extent. We see that when a human being develops from a human germ, it too reaches a certain limit of development. We see that Negro parents produce Negro children, white parents produce white children, and we could cite many other examples that show us that, just as with plants, human development is confined within certain limits. But this only goes so far, up to the limits of the physical, etheric, and even astral nature. Many things will be evident in the habits and passions of a child that remain throughout life, which are, so to speak, similar to the passions and instincts of the ancestors. But if human beings were just as confined within the limits of a certain growth as plants are, then there would be no such thing as education, as the development of soul and spirit qualities. If you imagine two children of different parents who are very similar in terms of their predispositions and external characteristics, and then imagine that one child is neglected, that not much effort is put into its education, while the other is carefully educated, sent to a good school, and undergoes a meaningful development, then you cannot possibly say that this meaningful development was already contained in the seed of the child, as it is in a bean. The bean grows from the seed in any case; you do not need to educate it in any special way. That is part of its nature. We cannot educate plants, but we can educate human beings. We can pass something on to human beings, instill something in them, whereas we cannot do the same with plants. Where does this come from? The reason is that the etheric body of the plant always has a certain inner lawfulness that is complete, that develops from seed to seed, and that has a certain cycle that cannot be exceeded. It is different with the etheric body of the human being. Here, apart from that part of the etheric body which is used for growth, for the same development which the human being also has within certain limits, as the plant does, there is, so to speak, another part in the etheric body which is free, which has no use from the outset, if we do not teach human beings all kinds of things in their education, if we do not instill all kinds of things into the human soul, which this free part of the etheric body then processes. Thus, there really is a part of the etheric body in human beings that is not used by nature itself. Human beings preserve this part of the etheric body; they do not use it for growth or for their natural organic development, but retain it as something free within themselves, through which they can take in the ideas that enter them through education.

[ 6 ] Now, however, this taking in of ideas happens in such a way that human beings first receive impressions. Human beings must always receive impressions, for the whole of education is based on impressions and on the interaction between the etheric body and the astral body. For in order to receive impressions, the astral body is necessary. The etheric body is necessary for you to retain this impression, so that it does not disappear again. Even the smallest, seemingly most insignificant memory requires the activity of the etheric body. For example, when you look at an object, the astral body is necessary. But in order to retain it when you turn your head away, you need the etheric body. The astral body is necessary for seeing; in order to have the idea, you need the etheric body. So even if this activity of the etheric body is still very small for such a retention of ideas, even if it only really comes into play when lasting habits, lasting inclinations, changes of temperament, and so on arise, the etheric body is still necessary for this. It must be there even if one wants to retain a simple idea in one's memory. For all retention of ideas is based in a certain way on memory.

[ 7 ] Now, through educational impressions and through the spiritual development of the human being, we have incorporated all kinds of things into his free etheric member, and we can now ask ourselves: Does this free etheric member remain completely insignificant for the growth and development of the human being? No, that is not the case. Gradually, as the human being grows older—not so much in the years of youth—that which has been incorporated into the etheric body through the impressions of education participates in the whole life of the human body, including the inner life. And you can best imagine how this participates if you consider a fact that is not usually taken into account in life. One thinks that the soul has no great significance for human life in general. Nevertheless, the following can happen: Imagine that a person becomes ill simply because he has been exposed to unsuitable climatic conditions. Now let us imagine hypothetically that this person can be ill under two conditions: for example, that he does not have much to process in the free member of the etheric body. Let us assume that he is an indolent person, on whom the outside world has made little impression, who has encountered great difficulties in his upbringing, and in whom things have gone in one ear and out the other. Such a person will lack something that is necessary for recovery, something that another person has, for example, who has a lively, active mind, who absorbed a great deal in his youth, who processed a great deal, and who therefore took very good care of the free member of his etheric body. Of course, external medicine will first have to determine why the healing process is more difficult for one person than for another. This free limb of the etheric body, which has become energetic through manifold impressions, makes itself felt here and participates in the healing process through its inner mobility. In numerous cases, people owe their rapid recovery or painless recovery to the fact that they diligently absorbed the impressions offered to them in their youth with lively spiritual participation. Here you see the influence of the spirit on the body! The healing process is quite different for a person who goes through life in a dull-witted manner than for someone whose free member of the etheric body is not heavy and lethargic, but has remained active. You can already convince yourself of this fact externally if you look at the world with open eyes, if you observe how mentally indolent and mentally active people behave when they are ill.

[ 8 ] You see, then, that the etheric body is something quite different in human beings than in mere plants. Plants lack this free member of the etheric body that enables human beings to develop further, and the fact that human beings have such a free member of the etheric body is, in essence, the basis of the entire development of the human being. If you compare beans from a thousand years ago with beans today, you will notice a certain difference, but it is essentially very small; beans have essentially remained the same in form. But compare the people of Europe in the age of Charlemagne with the people of today: why do people today have completely different ideas and completely different feelings? Because they have always had a free link to the etheric body, through which they were able to absorb something and transform their nature. All this applies in general. But now we must consider how this whole mode of action, which we have characterized, works in detail.

[ 9 ] Let us suppose that a person, having received an impression, could not erase it from their memory, but that this impression remained there. It would be a curious thing at first if you had to think that everything that had made an impression on you since your youth was always present every day of your life, from morning to night. You know that this is only present for a certain time after death. There it serves a good purpose. But in life, people forget. Not only have you all forgotten countless things that you experienced in your childhood, but also much of what happened last year—and certainly some of what happened to you yesterday. An idea that has disappeared from your memory, that you have “forgotten,” has by no means disappeared from your entire being, from your entire spiritual organism. That is absolutely not the case. If you saw a rose yesterday and have now forgotten it, the image of the rose is still present within you, as are the other impressions you have taken in, even if they are forgotten by your immediate consciousness.

[ 10 ] Now there is a great, enormous difference between an idea while we have it in our memory and the same idea when it has disappeared from our memory. So we grasp with our eyes an idea that we have formed through an external impression and that now lives in our consciousness. Then we look with our soul how it gradually disappears, how it is gradually forgotten. But it is there, it remains in the entire spiritual organism. What is it doing there? What is this, so to speak, forgotten idea doing? It has a very meaningful function. For it is only when it is forgotten that it begins to work in the right way on this free limb of the etheric body that I have described to you, and to make this free limb of the etheric body useful to the human being. It is as if it were only then digested. As long as the human being uses it to know something through it, it does not work inwardly on the free mobility, on the organization of the free member of the etheric body. The moment it sinks into oblivion, it begins to work. So we can say: There is constant work going on in the free member of the human etheric body, constantly working on it. And what is it that is working there? It is the forgotten ideas. That is the great blessing of forgetting! As long as an idea remains in your memory, you relate that idea to an object. When you look at a rose and have the idea of it in your memory, you relate the idea of the rose to the external object. As a result, the idea is bound to the external object and must send its inner power to it. But the moment you forget the idea, it is unleashed within you. It begins to develop germinating forces that work inwardly on the etheric body of the human being. Thus, our forgotten ideas have a very essential meaning for us. A plant cannot forget. Of course, it cannot receive impressions either. But it could not forget simply because its entire etheric body is used up for its growth, because there is no unused residue. It would have nothing if ideas could enter it that needed to be developed.

[ 11 ] But everything that happens happens out of lawful necessity. Wherever there is something that is supposed to develop and is not supported in its development, an obstacle to development is created. Everything in an organism that is not incorporated into its development becomes an obstacle to development. Suppose that all kinds of inclusions, substances that cannot be absorbed into the general watery substance of the eye, were to separate inside the eye; the eye would be disturbed in its vision. Nothing must remain that is not woven into the fabric, that cannot be absorbed. The same is true of mental impressions. A person who, for example, could receive impressions and keep them constantly in their consciousness could very easily come to a point where the limb that is supposed to be nourished by the forgotten ideas receives too little of these forgotten ideas and, like a lame limb, disrupts development instead of promoting it. This also explains why it is harmful for a person to lie awake at night, suffering from certain worries that they cannot remove from their consciousness. If they could forget them, they would become beneficial agents for their etheric body. Here you have a tangible example of the blessing of forgetting, and here you also have an indication of the necessity of not compulsively holding on to this or that idea, but rather learning to forget this or that. It is extremely harmful to a person's inner health if they are completely unable to forget certain things.

[ 12 ] What we can say here about the most everyday things of the moment also applies to ethical and moral circumstances. Something that we can call the beneficial effect of a character that does not hold a grudge is really based on this. It is detrimental to a person's health if we are resentful. If someone has harmed us and we have internalized the impression of what they have done to us and keep coming back to it as soon as we see them, then we relate this idea of harm to the person and allow it to flow outward. But suppose we have managed to shake the hand of the person who has hurt us when we meet them again, as if nothing had happened: then that is truly healing. And it is not just an image, but a fact that it has a healing effect. Such an idea, which appears dull and ineffective on the outside when someone has done something to us, pours inward at the same moment like a soothing balm for many things within us. These things are facts, and from them we can see the blessing of forgetting in an even broader sense. Forgetting is not merely a deficiency for human beings, but something that belongs to the most beneficial things in human life. If human beings developed only memory and if everything that made an impression on them remained in their memory, then their etheric body would have more and more to carry, would become increasingly rich in content, but at the same time it would wither away more and more inwardly. It is thanks to forgetting that they become capable of development. In any case, it is true that no idea disappears completely from human beings. This is best demonstrated by the great recollection that we experience immediately after death. It shows that no impression is completely lost.

[ 13 ] Having thus touched upon the blessing of forgetting for everyday life in the neutral and also in the moral realms, we can now consider the effectiveness of this forgetting for life in its great scope during the time between death and a new birth. What is Kamaloka, that transitional period of human life that lies before our entry into Devachan, into the actual spiritual world? Kamaloka exists because immediately after death, human beings cannot forget their inclinations, their desires, and the pleasures they experienced in life. At death, human beings first leave their physical body. Then the great tableau of memories that has often been described to you appears before the soul. This ceases completely after two, three, or at the latest four days. Then a kind of extract of the etheric body remains. While the actual extensive part of the etheric body withdraws and dissolves into the general world ether, a kind of essence, a skeleton, a framework of the etheric body remains, but contracted. The astral body is the carrier of all instincts, drives, desires, passions, feelings, sensations, and pleasures. Now, the astral body in Kamaloka would not be able to become aware of the tormenting deprivation if it did not still have the possibility, through its connection with the remnants of the etheric body, to remember what it enjoyed and desired in life. And weaning oneself off something is basically nothing more than gradually forgetting what binds a person to the physical world. Thus, if a person wants to enter Devachan, they must first learn to forget what binds them to the physical world. So here too we see that a person is tormented by still having memories of the physical world. Just as worries can become tormenting for humans when they refuse to leave their memory, so too do the inclinations and instincts that remain after death become tormenting, and this tormenting memory of the connection with life is expressed in everything that humans have to go through during their Kamaloka period. And at the moment when they succeed in forgetting everything that was present in the way of desires and cravings for the physical world, only then do the achievements and fruits of the previous life emerge as they must be effective in Devachan. There they become the creators and master craftsmen in the shaping of the new life. For it is basically the case that in Devachan, man works on the new form he is to have when he enters life again. This work, this preparation of his future being, gives him the bliss he feels throughout Devachan. When man has passed through Kamaloka, he already begins the preliminary work for his future form. Life in Devachan is always filled with using the extract they have received to develop their next form in its archetype. They shape this archetype in such a way that they work the fruits of their past life into it. However, they can only do this by forgetting what made Kamaloka so difficult for them.

[ 14 ] So when we speak of suffering and deprivation in Kamaloka, we see that this stems from the fact that human beings are unable to forget certain connections with the physical world, that the physical world hovers before their souls like a memory. But then, when he has passed through the “flood of Lethe,” when he has crossed the river of forgetfulness, when he has learned this forgetting, then the achievements and experiences of the previous incarnation are used to build up, piece by piece, the archetype, the prototype of the next life. And then the blissful pleasure of Devachan begins to take the place of suffering. Just as in ordinary life, when worries torment us, when certain ideas refuse to leave our memory, we insert a piece of wood, a withering piece, into our etheric body, which contributes to our ill health, so too, after death, we have a piece in our being that contributes to our suffering and deprivation for as long as as long as we have not forgotten all connections with the physical world. Just as these forgotten ideas can become a seed of healing for humans, so all experiences of the previous life become a source of pleasure in Devachan, when the stream of forgetting has been crossed, when humans have forgotten everything that binds them to life in the sensory world.

[ 15 ] Thus we see how these laws of forgetting and remembering also apply to the great scope of life.

[ 16 ] Now you might ask: How can human beings have any idea of what happened in their past lives after death, if they have to forget this life? Someone might say: Can you really speak of forgetting, since human beings have shed their etheric bodies, and memory and forgetting have something to do with the etheric body? Of course, memory and forgetting take on a somewhat different form after death. They change in such a way that reading the Akashic records takes the place of ordinary memory. What has happened in the world has not disappeared; it is objectively there. As the memory of the connection with physical life fades away in Kamaloka, these events emerge in a completely different way, confronting the human being in the Akashic Records. He therefore no longer needs the connection with life that arises from ordinary memory. All such questions that may arise will be resolved for us. However, this requires that we take our time and deal with these things gradually, for it is not possible to have everything at hand that can make a thing comprehensible.

[ 17 ] Much in everyday life will also become clear to us when we know these things as they have now been discussed. Much that belongs to the human etheric body will become apparent to us in the peculiar reaction of the temperaments on human beings. We have said that these enduring characteristics of character, which we call temperament, also have their origin in the etheric body. Take a person with a melancholic temperament who cannot get beyond certain ideas that he must constantly ponder. This is quite different from a sanguine or phlegmatic temperament, where ideas simply fade away. A melancholic temperament will be detrimental to human health in the sense we have just seen, while a sanguine temperament can be extremely beneficial to human health in a certain sense. Of course, these things should not be taken to mean that people must strive to forget everything. But you see that it is precisely from these things, as we have come to know them, that the healthiness and beneficial nature of a sanguine or phlegmatic temperament can be explained, and the unhealthiness of a melancholic temperament. Of course, the question is whether such a phlegmatic temperament also has the right effect. A phlegmatic person who only takes in trivial ideas will easily forget them. That can only make him healthy. But if he only takes in such ideas, it may not be good for him at all. Different things are at work here.

[ 18 ] The question: Is forgetting merely a deficiency of human nature, or is it perhaps something useful? Spiritual science provides the answer to this question. And we see, on the other hand, how strong moral impulses can follow from the recognition of such things. If a person believes that it is beneficial for his salvation—which must be viewed objectively—to be able to forget insults and injuries inflicted upon him, then a completely different impulse will arise. But as long as he believes that this has no meaning, moral preaching will be of no use. But if they know that they should forget and that their salvation depends on it, then they will probably respond to this impulse in a completely different way. We need not immediately call this selfish, but we may say: If I am sick and infirm, if I ruin my spiritual, mental, and physical inner being, then I am of no use to the world. One can also look at the question of well-being from a completely different point of view. Such considerations will not be of much use to someone who is a pronounced egoist. But if a person has the salvation of humanity in mind and is therefore also concerned that he can contribute to it, thus indirectly also having his own salvation in mind — if a person is capable of considering this, then he will also be able to draw moral conclusions from such considerations. And it will become apparent that when spiritual science intervenes in human life by showing people the truth about certain spiritual conditions, it will provide them with the greatest ethical and moral impulses that no other knowledge and no merely external moral precepts can offer them. Knowledge of the spiritual world as conveyed by spiritual science is therefore a powerful impulse that can bring about the greatest progress in human life, including in relation to morality.